Why the Gender Difference on SAT Math Doesn't Matter

When the American College Testing Board released the results of 2013 SAT performance, they found that, once again, boys outperformed girls on the mathematics section of the test. In fact, this sex difference was the latest entry in an uninterrupted trend dating back to the 1970's.

And the blog wars began.

According to Dr. Mark Perry of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, this "huge, statistically significant +30-point gender gap on the SAT" is a clear indication that "there are some innate differences by gender for mathematical ability" and so "closing the STEM gender jobs gap may be a futile attempt in socially engineering an unnatural, and unachievable, outcome."

The purpose of this blog is to explain how these seemingly divergent views can be both right and wrong at the same time. The key is appreciating the full meaning of the words of fellow blogger, Dr. Steve Stewart-Williams:

Let's start with a simple fact: Most women do not have the right aptitude to be professors at top STEM departments. This is unfortunate, perhaps, but it’s true. It’s also true, though, that most men don’t have the right aptitude! Only a small minority of people do. The phenomenon we’re trying to explain is not why half the population (men) can do it whereas half the population (women) can’t. Most of the population can’t, and of the tiny fraction who can, some are men and some are women. The only question is: Why is the tiny fraction of men working in STEM fields today somewhat larger than the tiny fraction of women?

First, notice that only 7.2% of the 1.7 million students who were tested in 2012 scored in the "genius" (700-800) range. Of that tiny percentage, 4.5% were male and 2.7% were female—a male-to-female ratio of 1.6 to 1. Only 17.9% scored in the "above average" category (600-690), and the male-to-female ratio is much narrower (1.2 to 1). Finally, almost 30% scored in the "average" category (500-590), and about half were male and half were female; the ratio is just about 1:1.

So it simply is not the case that every male outperforms every female on math, nor is it even the case that the majority of males outperform the majority of females on math. Yet this is typically the conclusion drawn in the popular press when SAT performance scores are reported.

In fact, some claim that this 32-point difference not only constitutes evidence of innate male superiority in mathematics, they claim that it is evidence of male superiority overall. The comment section following Perry's article is quite telling in this regard. Many interpret this 32-point sex difference on a subsection of a paper-and-pencil college entrance exam as support for patriarchy as the "natural human order".

So let's look more closely at what the 32-point difference means. First, compare the graph from Perry's blog with the same data redrawn using the full range of SAT scores.

Note how the "enormous" sex difference actually appears quite small when the Y-axis is more truthfully drawn.

Now compare the distributions of male and female math SAT scores in the following graph:

Notice how similar the distributions are, and how close together the means of the distributions are.

So if there is actually very little difference in performance between the vast majority of males and females, how could a 32-point mean difference be statistically significant?

There is no secret to this. It is simply a matter of sample size and variability: The larger the sample and the more tightly clustered the scores, the smaller the difference needed to achieve statistical significance. A total of nearly 1.7 million students took the SAT tests in 2013. The math scores ranged from 200 to 800 points, were normally distributed with an overall mean of 514, and an "average spread" of scores around that mean (standard deviation) of a little over 100 points (sd = 118). With a normally distributed sample size that large with such tightly clustered scores, even a tiny difference in average performance would be statistically significant.

Because significance tests can sometimes be misleading, scientific journals typically require other statistics to assess the importance of a result. The most common are assessments of effect size—tests that tell you how large the effect is. Using the data released from the SAT board (Mean male = 521, sd = 121; mean female = 499, sd = 114), it turns out that about 3% of the variability in SAT math scores can be attributed to the sex of the test-taker; 97% is due to other factors—presumably differences in training and natural aptitude in math (Cohen's d = .37, effect size r-squared = .03).

Now if men and women are about the same in terms of mathematics aptitude, how do we explain these facts:

I do believe is all about gender. I am in no way disclunting yoir fine work. I believe it is very informative. But I think the answer is more than boys like math and girls do not, which is a popular stereotype. I think if you look at it from a microscopic level, I believe you'll find the real answer.

I believe, in my opinion, that women find more compatibility with men on the topic by definition, not theory. On its face, it don't make sense. If women enjoyed science as much as us then they would devote their time studying the field. Would women feel uncomfortable in a field where men outnumber women in a field? Is a likely scenario, but look at basketball. One of the best womens college coaches is Connecticut head coach Geno Auriemma(I may misspell his name wrong)*. And it makes sense that a man in a womens sport can be one of the best coaches in the conference and league. Women are natural listeners. As a matter of fact, they are exceptional listeners. The research is too much to talk about why a man can influence young collegiate girls in a meaningful way. And these girls are college students as well. Apply it to the field of science, and you can see how women may leave it up to us to guide them. But that doesn't explain why women don't engage as much as men in the field. As a matter of fact, science is not about strength, is about using brain. But why not the same devotion as sports?

I believe that they do think they are involved, unconsciously. Just because they don't engage don't necessarily mean that they don't like the field or have zero interest in it. In many ways, with a complex field like science, women are quick to dismiss talk about problems that requires more than common sense. And if a man is good at what he is doing, why disturb it? In a womens eyes, it breaks trust and credibility if they interfere with a mans flow. It makes complete sense. Not just in attachment theory, but in competitive as well. Remember, research shows how women are always looking for compatible mates for reproduction.

I am in no way saying that women are lazy thinkers, and they need our inputs every time. We live in a different world, but understand the issue here is not why the differences, but is it a big deal? For some, many will say yes, and institutions need to start implementing more women-friendly environments to make the community acceptable to them, if they find it hostile and overmasculine. But for others, it may be that women just don't like the field, and therefore, don't bother studying these complex topics. I believe there is some truth to that. Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory is a great example of why he is just popular not just with men but with women as well. Even though he is a dork, his confidence and wittyness is a trait that women find likeable, and unsurprisingly, attractive.

Just as I believe that we know what we are doing, I truly believe women know what they are doing as well.

*For the sakes of this argument I use men as this example to differentiate the differences to put forward in my theory. I understand former coach Pat Smith of TN was very exceptional as well in her own right.

The only question is: Why is the tiny fraction of men working in STEM fields today somewhat larger than the tiny fraction of women?

To me, a better question is: why are people so focused on gender-related variations among tiny fractions of the population, especially if they're only "somewhat larger"?

Lawyers, for example, are often considered prestigious. They earn high salaries, and attain high status. Yet few people question why women outnumber men among the tiny fraction of the population that lawyers represent.

When female professionals outnumber males, it is because they are competent. When female professionals are rare it is because they are discriminated against. This is modern feminist logic. Except it is less and less acceptable to use this argument, so we have the faux statistical argument here.

The only thing this article convinces anyone with basic statistics knowledge of, is that the SAT math score difference matters a LOT. The people with scores under 700 are not going to be writing code and designing power plant turbines. Why is this so difficult to grasp? The people who lead STEM research groups at universities are going to be scoring even higher still.

True, women are discriminated, where you are blindlly wrong is your last sentese "MEN HAVEN'T", here are just a few examples:

Tell that to the soldiers who died in wars and were DRAFTED just because they were male, to the men in emergency situations where someone screams "women and children first", to all the men in the world who dont have another option in life than work to earn the love and respect from their families (12 hour a day cabbies for example, who barelly gets to enjoy the life with his family that he pays for, can you imagine if the woman took that role and the guy in the house? not talking about professional couples, im talking about low income jobs)
we get discriminated every single day of our lives, nobody has real empathy for men, i see the woman in the streets asking for money gets more than a guy missing his two legs, when women expect us to change ourselves whenever women feel they want to dress more revealing and not get uncofortable with the desire they cause, my feelings were not considered at all when i told a friendly coworker with utter respect that she looked specially beautiful today and she spreaded a "he made me uncorfortable" rummor about me (even tho i choose my words very carefully), whenever I google Breast cancer and i get 50 pages of information from my goverment healthcare website and only 3 paragraphs for Prostate cancer in that same website, when we hear "women need to be supported" and the jails are filled with guys who failed to find their way in life, when i get yelled at the bus by a "lady" because i took a seat and didnt offered to be a gentleman and you cant even argue reasonably because she just doesnt care, she just "deserves", my brother had a hard time trying to find a Graphic Designer job because most of the job postings said female wanted and the ones that didnt were severelly underpaid, when i was younger i lived with a woman who felt to be her right for me to pay her lifestyle, and she quited the job she got when we moved in togheter, she quited her job in less than a month because she didnt felt comfortable or liked it (and she was a good woman too, not really abusive) while I had NO CHOICE to find a way to enjoy and find happiness in the job i had.

still, as usual, we men try our best to rise to the ocation and learn to not take it personally, as many women do too, even if we utterlly fail to do so, only single mothers deal with the stare of: "well... you are the man of the house, what are you going to do to solve this".
thankfully (in a way) women are not brought up with the idea of "take it like a man" wich creates strenght, but also messes up the weaker of us, but the lack of that idea makes some women have an inmense comfort zone and are blind to all the work and effort that is being done arround her to MAKE HER LIFE BETTER, and in these days were its so easy to point a finger and say "discrimination!", so many of us get so irresponsably with the use of that word.

In all those cases a lot of men dedicated (and even gave) their lives with their chin up, filled with the valuable ilusion of honor, understanding the source of the double standard, as a gender, women have the innate value of creating life and the obvious strenght difference, women do not necessarilly have to risk themselves to earn respect and love from their social enviroment, men are expendable, thats why we are encouraged to take risks, why we live a few years shorter than women, why divorses mostly favor the wife, why men are 95% of the musicians who play and create the music for your favorite female singer which gives the impression that there are a lot of female musicias but there is really not, just in the front or in orchestras, why in any case of domestic violence the woman is never questioned or made responsable, whey rape cases can be falsified with no consecuences sending men to jail, why women barely do physical labor (contruction workers, miners, dangerous jobs in general, even if they would have the necessary strenght to do it everyday).

Like Frankie said "is it a big deal?" that is a very good question.
Well, for men, not really, we just wish you women would like to come out and be everywere, not just a few cherry.picked selected jobs, in some cases now a days, there seems to be an assumption that differences in % means inequality, i suscribe completelly to Frankie's idea, and only wish to add that Women, have more options in life to support their loved ones and earn respect from their social enviroments and tend choose a more balanced life between work, family and love.

I remeber very vividly the conversation i had with the woman who was going to be the head of technology for the social security hospitals in Mexico City, she said "I was soo excited to reach that level in my professional carrear... but one day I met the person i was going to replace in that position, a woman in her 50s, she impressed me so much because i felt so much loneliness in her that scared me... I didnt sleept that night, just thinking... Is that what i want? after a few weeks of thinking about it, i decided to turn down the job, found myself a nice man to marry and have children" Now a days she works very happy as head of acamedic technology in a prestigious school in Guadalajara, where her kids go, she has a lovely house, shares economic and caring responsabilities with her husband and has 2 really smart good kids,

My point is, I do understand the desire to see more women in high science carrears, i do understand the feeling frustation when it seems like those reasearch numbers are used to mock women, but i also understand that women, excercising their freedom make more balanced choices, and a carrear in high science is very demanding home-relocating-wise, and it simply doesnt appeal to most, law does, teaching does, medicine does (thats a time demanding carrrear and women dominate it),
and I also understand that some women take this issue as a lack of motivation, and i do agree in that a bit, but it seems to me that they also part from the idea that 50% has to be the norm, like "women HAVE to be interested" like if the world doesnt mock male nurses, and you dont hear nothing from them, they just go out and do what they love.

Statistics have shown, that the more gender equal the country gets, the less women FREELY choose not to purse a sciece carrear even when all the tools and options are available. so lets celebrate the ones that do choose to do so, but lets no FORCE the rest to do that.

an historical truth refering to work is: men are everywere even when unwanted, or dangerous, women are in someplaces but that has nothing to do with the value women have as human beings and as the mayority of the population in this world.

Now a days I ran into a certain statistic that showed the hiring for science jobs for male and women are 2-1 in favor to women, since every company is so desperate to hire the few women who decide to go for science carrear to improve their statistics in that manner, so we can conclude:
The companies efforts to not be sided to one gender (statisticly, no life-choise context) actually make them more biased against men., can you guess what is the solution that men will come up with? because we havent heard media complains, the solution will be, I HAVE TO BE BETTER because NO ONE but my mother and my wife will feel empathy for me, no one will fight for me other than my self.

Those Goldie Box toys from Debbie seem a bit sided to me... I tought science toy where very gender neutral, but aparently not for Debbie lets make them pink, hopefully it has the impact she wants and we see more amazing women with coats and googles in the future.

can we all get over the "women need support" trend we have and come up with the "PEOPLE need support" or do we need more guys in jail or out of job?

The 'old school' of Psychology may have been correct in that the left brain - right brain dominance difference between the sexes has influence here. Should we also be concerned with the female superiority in spatial skills? Math or the Arts, both are naturally influenced by brain side dominance and brain side dominance is influenced by gender. Hence ...

1. The author writes: "The "enormous" sex differences appear quite small when the Y axis is more truthfully drawn."

You cannot be serious? No matter whether how you graph the data, whether you blow up the image or reduce its size, doesn't impact the fact that the delta between the two lines is about 30 points, which represents over 25 % of a standard deviation from the overall math test score. The delta is not only statistically significant, but persistent over decades, and perhaps more revealing than ever given that the best high school math students (by grades) are women.

2. The math achievement gap may explain some of the underrepresentation of women in STEM, but gender preferences are likely to play a bigger part.

There is no mention here that women outperform men in the writing section of the SAT, even at the highest percentiles.

It therefore comes as no surprise that women are overrepresented in degree courses such as law (indeed, 62.4% of students admitted to UK law schools were women), with a similar proportion of women (61.5%) representing the law firm training contract intake in the following year.

Should I, as a man, now start a movement to contest the lower level writing ability of 17-18 year old men and to start a movement to restore the balance of men in law firms? Or to accuse the skill of writing (and the SAT writing section) to be gender-biased against men?

It is of course troubling that boys' writing skills are sub standard relative to girls and care should be taken to see whether this gap can be narrowed, but a narrowing of the gap are unlikely to ever trump the gender preferences which lead boys into computer sciences, sciences, maths, finance and more quantitative fields (which are more compatible with the natural abilities of men)?

On a related note, should I accuse the nursing or teaching professions to be biased against men?

3. The statement about sample size is also moot. The sample sizes are large enough for the effects to be negligible and the more important result is the proportion of women who achieve the score, which is tackled by Perry. And this result is further bolstered by the fact that women, with a greater representation of honours students and GPAs are coming in with a major advantage.

4. Lifestyle choices are not to be ignored: even in places like law firms which are increasingly dominated by junior female lawyers, many women CHOOSE to taken time off to have families. It therefore comes as no surprise that the remaining people within the firm, whether male or female, should all else being equal, start to pull ahead of the women (or increasingly men) that choose time off to pursue parenthood.

5. I am in no means advocating that women cannot or should not pursue STEM careers; the point being that a combination of the mentioned factors likely explains the underrepresentation of women in these fields, particularly at the highest level. I am a firm believer in equal opportunity, freedom of choice and meritocracy. The unnatural concepts of "fair representation" and therefore social engineering go against the principles, and lead to worse outcomes.

It never ceases to amuse me that people are unable to accept evidence which is backed by hard, unbiased data.

This article unfortunately perpetuates the bias of denial and discredits the author's objectivity and scientific acumen.

PG., I think it might be a good idea for you to enroll in some statistics classes. You seem to have some very serious misunderstanding of what the terms "standard deviation" and "statistical significance" mean.

As I point out, using the data released from the SAT board (Mean male = 521, sd = 121; mean female = 499, sd = 114), it turns out that about THREE PERCENT of the variability in SAT math scores can be attributed to the sex of the test-taker. Please click on the link in the article to read about effect sizes if this isn't clear to you.

More importantly, our views do not diverge as radically as you believe they do. But your comments are a common knee-jerk, slap-down reactions that some people have when hearing a female voice talking about purported sex differences. The assumption is that she wants to wave them away and prove men and women are exactly the same. But more often than not, that is not what the female voice is saying, which closer (and more respectful) inspection would clearly show.

If you click on the link in the article at the end for the subsequent article that discusses purported sex differences in STEM in more detail, you will find these facts and explanations:

"Men show only an insignificant 5-point advantage over women on the quantitative section of the Graduate Record Examination, and they score one point lower than women on the analytic section.""

"There is no gender difference in the biosciences, the social sciences, or mathematics, and not much of a difference in the physical sciences. But women are "underrepresented" in engineering and computer science... So it isn't the case that women are not interested in STEM. They are just as interested in the biosciences and social sciences, a little less interested in math and physics, and not much interested in computer science and engineering."

"One interpretation of the gender difference in STEM careers (and the workforce in general) is that women are not making these choices in order to study what is intrinsically interesting to them but because they are herded into areas that are more "gender appropriate"."

"The problem with this "blank slate" interpretation of gender differences is that it is at odds with the results of most developmental and comparative studies. Newborn (link is external) girls prefer to look at faces while newborn boys prefer to look at mechanical stimuli (such as mobiles). Girls and juvenile female monkeys show a greater interest in young infants than do boys and juvenile male monkeys. But when it comes to toys, a consistent finding is that boys and juvenile male monkeys strongly prefer mechanical toys over plush toys or dolls, while girls and female juvenile monkeys are more eclectic in their tastes, showing no significant preference between the two. (See this (link is external) for summary of this research.) It is not difficult to see how such early emerging preferences can end up shaping career choices later on: Women tend to gravitate toward science fields that focus on living things and agents, men to science fields that focus on objects."

"To those who insist that large amounts of money must be channeled into "closing the gap" in all STEM fields, I ask this simple question: Why?"

"If women simply are not as interested in being engineers as they are in being biologists, why should they be cajoled and tempted (and sometimes shamed) into being engineers?"

"The percentage of women (link is external) (45%) employed as beginning assistant professors in STEM fields is about the same as men (55%). But their career trajectories diverge substantially after that. Only 38% of women make tenure, and only 22% are promoted to full professor.

Does this mean women can't handle the job? The bulk of the evidence (link is external) on this "leaky pipeline" points to one simple fact: Establishing a science career is incompatible with having a family.

The demands of caring for young children are incompatible with the demands of establishing a research lab in preparation for tenure review, yet the tenure push coincides exactly with a young scientist's prime reproductive years—and that is true for both men and women. But women are less willing to sacrifice having and caring for children than are men, and so they drop out of academic research at twice the rate of men."

"Claudia Goldin, Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University, argues (link is external) that the solution to this problem (and the salary gender gap in general in the workforce) is for the workplace to embrace flexibility. Outdated notions of traditional career trajectories should be discarded, and emphasis should instead be placed on results regardless of where or when the work was done."

The difference in the mean SAT scores is not only significant, but large enough to be meaningful in real life terms (hence my contrasting of the delta the means of the two samples in relation to the standard deviation for the test as a whole to give a sense of perspective of the 32 point gap).

The difference in means is a large one. In fact, it can easily be verified that a mean score of 531 (mean for men) roughly represents a score in the 53rd percentile of all test takers, which compares to a mean of 499 (for women), which equates to a score in the 43rd percentile for all test takers.

The lower hand of the distribution is less likely to be relevant to the debate as it is not an unreasonable assumption that most (quality) STEM jobs will go to graduates in the right hand tail of the distribution, if not the first quartile of results.

If better colleges are scrutinising math scores in a competitive undergrad admissions process, then it is clear that more men **should** be eligible for being admitted into more competitive STEM based programmes. This will naturally skew workforce representation of males post graduation.

But the problem is compounded as we travel to the right hand tail of the distribution. At levels of 700 and above (the 93rd percentile), men outnumber women 1.62 to 1. This translates into a much bigger pool of applicants and it therefore comes as no surprise than men are over indexed in STEM undergrad classrooms (the converse and analogous argument seeming to hold true for law degrees in the UK where women dominate, perhaps partially owing to better scores / A level equivalents in relevant subjects).

Let's think about what this means: there are 74.5k men with Math SAT scores over 700, vs 46k women (1.62x men to women in terms of the pool of potential undergraduate applicants). The skewness is only compounded as we make our way towards 800. The Harvard freshman class by contrast is ~1,900 to give a sense of perspective. So we are talking about a very sizeable pool of bright students. If you factor in gender preference into the equation, it is only natural that men will be overindexed in STEM programnes (gender preference) in the better schools (math SAT scores) relative to women.

The best STEM employers will similarly fish in the best pool of graduates that they can afford, which will only leave to a further skewing of the mix.

And when you bring family and lifestyle choices into the equation, it is only natural that there may be even more attrition in STEM female staff (or at the very least seniority and pay catch up) upon returning to work from maternity.

2. In respect of your 3% variability comment, can I suggest that you kindly run this same analysis for SAT math scores above 700 and publish the details on this board?

You can also try a regression analysis with a dummy variable which is say 1 for 'men' and 0 for 'women', in addition to ANOVA.

The mean result for the entire sample will not show the relevant variability proportion, especially more more competitive STEM courses based on the above argument in 1 above.

3. In terms of GRE results, I do not know where your source is coming from.

Here are some results about the GMAT which highlights persistent gender test score differences between men and women (and I can assure you that the same debate about STEM female representation applies equally to the investment banking and other highly paid investment and finance professions). The performance lag of women is marked in GMAT

I would suggest you add GMAT results for all to see.

4. You wrote: "but your comments are a knee-jerk, slap down reaction that some people have when hearing a female voice talking about purported sex differences"

I reject and refute this comment. I am not saying that this may never have happened to you, but I can assure you that my posting in response to your article would have been exactly the same had you been a man, intersexe or an alien.

You publish something online with a comments section, you need to be ready to defend your analysis and engage in intellectual discourse on what is an interesting yet overly politicised topic. It is comments like yours that makes some men feel like they cannot engage in an intellectual discourse (which needs to be fact, analysis and arguments based) on this topic out of fear that their views being be perceived as being gender-biased or indeed sexist.

5. You are right, in some respects our views are not quite divergent after all although your STEM underrepresentation arguments appears to be centered more on gender preferences and lifestyle as opposed to the purported innate mathematical proclivities and abilities between men and women. I am giving more or less equal weighting to all three variables.

I absolutely believe that women can be highly successful in STEM, investment / finance, or any other career. The point is that the pool of women at very high scores is significantly smaller than for men, and adding gender preference and lifestyle/family choices reduces even further. And in the context of a highly politicised gender parity issue, particular in the United States, but also other Western countries, the best women are HIGHLY competed for, by companies in ALL sectors, leaving a scarcity of them with businesses then faced with the possibility of hiring women for the sake of it, as opposed to finding the right person for the job.

I could borrow the structure of your article and write the same general paper about women in the legal profession, and all my arguments about it being "natural" for women to be over-indexed in legal courses and professions (owing to much higher SAT writing scores) and such over-indexing is incidentally leading to changes within law firms which attempt to partly negate the headwind created by family choices etc. which should perpetuate the over-indexing of women.

PG, there is no need to question my sources. Just click on the links in the article. My blog posts are thoroughly researched and meticulously documented.

You still seem be missing the point that sex accounts for only 3% of the variability in SAT. If you are as trained in stats as you claim, you would realize that isn't a strong foundation from which to launch claims about "innate sex-linked differences in math ability."

With respect to your other points, you still seem to be missing the point. Please note that as mentioned in the post, the ratio of men to women admitted to top engineering graduate programs is 1:1. The women who are admitted are just as qualified as the men.

As I pointed out, at levels of 700 and above (the 93rd percentile), men outnumber women 1.62 to 1. One could certainly draw attention to that in terms of frequencies (wow, that means there's a whole lot more men in that category), but what would be the point? In common sense terms, that ratio means that for every 5 students in the "genius math" category, 3 are men and 2 are women. Yet when people discuss the vaunted sex difference in the "math genius" category, they frequently claim that the men vastly outnumber women in that category. Some go so far as to claim that no women score in that range, data to the contrary be damned.

The logic underlying your arguments escapes me, and I assure you that is not because I am deficient in same. Instead, your comments seem to stem primarily from having some kind of axe to grind, and grind you will without even bothering to read the articles or click on the data links.

I should start saying that english is not my native language, and im not educated to that extend (no collage) pure curiosity, interest and selft taught.

I was with you and also PG in the exchange of points
until you decided to use the phrase (more respectfully), and the end of your last comment which suggested that PG's argument was born unrighteoustly, with grudge, which as far as i can read, it is not, he might be a bit harsh, i do not know the validity of his numbers, but he is logical adn consistent.

Still, thank you for posting this article.

This next opinion is not scientifical at all, but just an observation and a feeling i get from women around me, anything i say here (non violent disclaimer) does not mean women cant do certain things, or be whatever they want, i should say, this is an excersice on emplathy and observation, so whenever i write "you" i mean women, since women have a bigger sense of "us" as a gender. Feel free to ignore it completelly i do it for the mere joy of sharing toughts.

This a very weird time for women and men, for one part, you put your best effort to join the workforce, just a person working, like everyone else, studied, made homework, got a degree and want to make a carrear.

on the other side, you also feel the preassure from women, from this current time and oportunity to "pull up" other women, with passion as it should be, fight for it, like a chain has been pulled from you wrists and you are finally free.

You feel mistreated, a bit left behind, watching men have centuries head start in this area, so to compensate that, you try to focus on YOUR issues, and in most cases, in my experience you might be wrong, but the cause is worth fighting for, so the search for that issue goes on.

Still, you are a woman, and just like being a male brings centuries of culture into our minds and hearts (good and bad), being a woman does too.
So as far as my eyes can see, you go unchallenged about your arguments by your peers in such a level that anytime a man argue with you using reason, it has to be with dozens of disclaimers like "i support women", "i firmlly belive that women should...", "it has nothing to do with you being a woman"... and still after all those disclaimers, you can still feel it. personal.

There are just a very very few times when i couldnt stop the argument of a woman (non academic, and even academic) when it comes to their personal phylosophy just by asking "why" a few times, after, and it is so discouraging how little effort non-collage women put tought into their words. when they do have a belif, it comes from a faction, just as examples i can say, feminism, veggan, music culture, etc.
you dont have an idea of how many women i made uncorfatble when i was young not realizing that most women i met dont actually enjoy to phylosophy about their surroundings.

Your social surrounding has not challenged you enough, and you are not a victim because you havent searched for that challenge either.

Either because some women simply dont care, just enjoy talking, or you feel the challenge to your idea too personal, or either you are motivated by this era that makes you feel you have to represent women, and in thruth, arguments with that agenda are so transparent and easy to refute, they most of the time create confusion and get dissmissed rather than emplathy and support for your cause.

You women live in an era where you feel a minority when in fact you are the majority of the population anywere in the planet. an era were YOU are the link to the next step, the is no guideline, no book of the ABC's of life when it comes to professional women, right now, the most of the time you get your que from sucessful men, but not all women fit that role. Then all the "support women" ideas come out, all the "male enviroment" ideas come out, and it is true, but not completelly.

Women nowadays have the task to CREATE that place, that cannot be achived by demanding it, by forcing it, by handing the responsability to others... that has to come out genuingly from you, just like african americans who were completelly striped from their culture won the admiration of many americans with Hip Hop, music, dance, way of behave and talk, you also have to reinvent your professional culture, carve your place, like many other men did before you, not because they were men, but because that place didnt existed before them.

It is no surprising this is coming very hard, first of all, this change has happened very recently, second, as a woman you integrate almost everything as connected, emotions, body, mind, etc, we man can separate more easilly because we have learned we are expendable, we carrying the benefit and the pain of it, which is the root of why we can be more cruel, cold, and also precise.
Again, the idea of "going out there to be challenged, to be proved wrong to escalte my thinking, to be cut down". That is why most grandfathers seems so spent, while grandmothers still have that little spark of life.

How can anyone expect all this to change in just a few years, technology changes that fast, but people need time, time argue, time to retreat and digest ideas, time to asses, realize, time for anger, time for peace... we are all adapting to this (men and women).

Many men feel pushed aside from the role (provider) their parents taught them and that being the only source of respect for men it is a horrendous notion to live with, many men feel everytime women complain about something, it is men who have to change, not actually you which it is true,but not completelly.

Many women feel neglected prefessionally, since the work place has only being supporting 1 way of thinking, that is way you have comeup with the phrase "male dominated", which it is true, but not true completelly, because if that were true, there wouldnt be as many carrear options as there it... arts, literature, engennering, research science, physical labor, law, sports, etc etc, there is actually room for everyone when you excel, and people make profession, not viceversa.

Just as women find very distasteful and prejudicing to be labeled and predefined, we men do too. Just as women feel marginalized as emotional, we feel the same way too when you marginalize our intentions, which it is true (the sexual underline), but not completelly, after all the tought we put in an idea just to be balanced and fair,

Men acuse women to have the agenda of prolong this state of "we need to improve (only) women" which is true, as much as you try to deny it, and it is not your fault, it has been pushed down your throat, just like the idea of "women belong in the kitchen" was pushed down the throat of many men, it also not their fault, but it is in our hands to stop.

Women acuse men (the work structure) to be very unsoportive, insensitive, which is true, but not completelly, it is based on the belif of "we adapt to conquer", and every time we see a woman point out what seems unfair to her, we cant help to feel "take it like a... woman? hum...", as an example, i been told once by my female boss "dont be bitchy", all the subtext of that expression is amazing.

after all the smoke is clear from the ground, we both feel unheard... which is kinda the sickness of the era, were anyone can say anything at any time with a big audience but bareelly anyone really listens.

You have no idea what a luxury it is, the fact that you can complain and things happen, it feels to as good as also crippiling, denied the oportunity to actually earn what you wish, just given... male workers had to fight and even die to achive their demands, and basic demands, do you (women) think guys complain about you in any way to Human Resources? why not?, you do nothing worng?, you never step over the line? it seems to me that the word "appropiate" was just invented a few years ago, by you.

I once asked a friend for advice, when i was about to perform my music live for the very first time, i was nervous as i could be, i was about to enter a world i felt it created by someone else, that didnt belogned to me, he said to me: "Toughen up, toughen up, if you dont ALLOW people to express themselves the way they want to (even if hurtful) about your music, you will loose the chance for very important and interesting conversations".

In sum, I feel this is a very strange time for all of us, adapting to it, some guys dont even question it and anything you say he goes with it (no challenge), some women simply copy the role of sucess of a man (no personal phylosophy), even admiting "yeah... i think more like a man".

We are the link between old ideas and the world we wish mould, everything that happens now its in our hands.

proudly and with passion take the resposabilty of your words, your actions, becasue we men and women do listen and react to them.

As you are the experts, and I am not, I am going to approach this with questions not comments. It appears to me that this is simply a reflection of the bell curve comparisons between gender when we consider IQ scores. I believe men and women are equal in the medium, but that the bell curve for men is more spread out. Meaning, men score better at the high end, and men score worse at the low end, while women tend to group more tightly around the medium. Now, the difference is still relatively small. However, once we begin to consider IQs above 140, the effect becomes noticable, women are less represented than men in a significant way. BUT, men also significantly over represent the very lowest IQ scores in an equal way.

So, what I'm getting at is: Doesn't it make sense that there are more men in STEM fields because employers are simply choosing from the best candidate at the top, where men over represent? I don't understand why we'd consider scores and gender comparisons below the 85% in the nation. Granted you are correct, one cannot say men are better than women, because you are right, most people can't qualify. But that doens't change the fact that the most qualified are men. So, how is this not important. Why should the top qualifying men make room for women who aren't as qualified (even though they are quite smart). To make it 50/50 it seems a lot of very qualified men would have to be told to walk away from STEM careers after proving they can out compete the women being hired. Please share your thoughts, because I just don't see how it wouldn't be discrimination.

Hi Denise,
Thank you for your response, I appreciate it. I would like to ask one last question as I think it will help me understand the magnitude of what you are driving at. I see your logic, and it follows that if the numbers you quote are correct, then I would expect 6 out ten people to be men working in STEM, as a very rough estimate of course. Perhaps, due to tradition there are still more men, culture influences, and simply women finding interest is other careers (I'm not making excuses, just trying to imagine thing pragmatically). Also, I feel that we aren't just talking about top ranking scientists, and theorists, etc. We're talking many different positions within STEM. Different positions that spread across many disciplines and levels of complexity obviously, right? My meaning is, the industry as a whole is not just people like Einstein, so of course if you're above 700, then you might find yourself in STEM, even if you're just a lab assistant, or, if you're Steven Hawking. So here is my question. Are you suggesting that women are far less represented in STEM fields in general than 4 out of 10? Do you have an approximate of what the ratio actually is? I'm actually concerned because if women are currently 3 out of 10, well then I don't see much urgency in trying to fix what's not broken, I care more about talented people following their careers. However, if it's more like .5 women out of 10, then yeah, I think that is a tragedy, and perhaps something needs to be done about it, because this would indicate we are not taking advantage of our best minds, and fostering encouragement across the whole pool of talent that we have access to. This would seem like women are not being allowed to contribute in a way, that could actually make the domain of science a healthier and more robust place for all of us. Thank you for your time.

Briefly, women have achieved or have nearly achieved parity in all STEM fields except computer science and engineering, so it is disingenuous for writers to suggest otherwise. It is also the case that women tend to be attracted to STEM fields that apply scientific methodology to study living things (i.e., the biological, life, and social sciences). Women tend to be "over-represented" in these fields, yet no one seems to feel the need to pressure more men to enter these fields in order to achieve "gender balance".

It is interesting, however, to speculate as to why there are so few women in computer science and engineering--where the genuinely big money is made. I discuss some possible explanations in the article.

I hold a PhD in experimental psychology, and have taught statistics at the university level (including Yale University). I also publish papers that include sophisticated statistical analyses and mathematically modeling of cognitive phenomena, and review scientific papers for top journals and granting agencies (such as the National Science Foundation).